Katrina wrecked my school plans

September 13, 2005|By Nikki Usher, Redeye Special Contributor.

I'm a Harvard grad, so I never thought I'd have to accept charity. But two weeks ago, Hurricane Katrina put an end to my blissful existence as a bright-eyed first-year law student at Tulane University--and I find myself on uncharted terrain as I watch New Orleans' disintegration from afar.

I moved to New Orleans in June with my partner, prepared to spend the next three years of my life studying hard and playing even harder. We moved from Philly--about 2,000 miles by car--and started over.

We ditched our raggedy college furniture and bought new adult stuff. We squandered much of our savings on rent, air conditioning, car payments and pre-law school fun.

Hurricane Katrina came upon Tulane students suddenly. On Friday night, the law school kids were out partying en masse on Bourbon Street after the first week of classes. By Saturday, Tulane declared that we'd have the next five days off from school, so most people declared it a Hurricane Weekend and took off for some R&R.

Then Aug. 29 happened. And as I sat at a lake house in Georgia, I realized that, for at least a long while, my future probably was going to be pretty screwed up. For the first few days, Tulane didn't really exist--there was an emergency Web site set up to post the university president's updates every day or so.

For me, there didn't seem to be many options. Second- and third-year law students had to struggle to find spots as visiting students at other schools. But first-year students, because of the nature of the intense first-year curriculum, were at a loss.

Communicating with the law school administration and classmates over a shadow Web site run off Emory's server, Tulane presented the Tulane Law School Class of 2008 with three apparent options:

We could visit at another school as non-matriculating students for a semester and return to Tulane in January, only to potentially repeat the semester and join a summer program; we could do an intensive first-year program (hopefully) beginning in January; or, if we could argue in a compelling fashion, we could defer until fall 2006.

The best option for a solid academic record and for sanity's sake seemed to be to defer, and so here I am, back in Philly. Deferring, however, means losing my student loans and bringing the bank balance to zero. All of these decisions are complicated enough involving one person--but I've got a partner to consider. My partner's boss at the small-market research firm she worked for just sent an e-mail announcing her move to San Diego.

And here we are. We have no place of our own. We have no clothes. We have no money, but our New Orleans home is not totally destroyed (about 4 feet of water as far as we can tell from blogs), so FEMA said we're not eligible for that $2,000 debit card people are talking about.

We can couch surf in Philly for as long as needed. And in this regard we're lucky. But it isn't easy.

I've had to swallow my pride and ask for help--for the first time in my life I do not have enough of anything. I do not have more than three pairs of underwear, and I have only one bra. I had to show up at a job interview without socks.

We've had to ask the people we know--and people we don't know--for their generosity. I sent an e-mail to my old rugby team in Philly, and sitting in my car are toiletries, a Target gift card, T-shirts and work clothes.

The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association set up a Hurricane Katrina relief fund for its members, and when I got a Target card in the mail for $50, I burst into tears.

I found a job as a paralegal at a good law firm in Philly pretty quickly, but it's going to be hard to go to work when I'm waking up on a different couch every few days. Starting over twice wasn't in the cards this year. Having fun and going to Tulane Law in the pretty city of New Orleans was.